Planetfall

3.5 stars.

This is the first book in Emma Newman's Planetfall series and the first book by this author that I have read. It's an interesting slice of science fiction about a colony established on a distant planet by a group of scientists following a woman called Sun-Mi who, after waking from a coma, believes she has a vision of where God resides. It's a book about faith, betrayal, mental illness and how something built on a lie cannot last.

Renata Ghali, sometime lover of Sun-Mi, and an engineer specialising in 3D printing, has spent 22 years in the colony they established at the base of an alien structure they call “God's city”. Suh-Mi is, everyone believes, residing at the top of the city, communing with god. This is the faith that holds the colony together. That at some point Suh-Mi, the Pathfinder, will descend and reveal some kind of truth.

But all is not as it seems, and the secret that Ren and Mack, head of the colony, hide from the others threatens to send Ren off the rails. Especially when a young man (Sung-Soo) suddenly appears from the wilderness, who appears to be the grandson of Sun-Mi, lone survivor/descendant of a group whose planet fall did not go well, as their pods veered off course and crash landed. Is he who he says he is? How has he survived all these years? Will his presence make the whole carefully maintained edifice crumble?

The progression of this story is slow and careful, interspersed with flashbacks that fill in the back story of why these people left Earth of a potential wild goose chase. Newman creates an enclosed community, all quite comfortable on this alien world thanks to their technology and the ability to “print” whatever they need using the raw material around them, or recycling what is no longer needed. Ren's gradual descent into mental illness is handled well, her anxiety and OCD slowly building as Sung-Soo's presence pushes her to the limit.

It's only at the end that there is a burst of action and although some might feel the ending is rushed, leaving unanswered questions, Newman does finish Ren's story in a moving, revelatory way.

Planetfall is a good, solid slice of SF and I'm intrigued to see where Newman takes the story in the books that follow.

Very interesting story. Not what I expected, definitely. I think the main character, Ren, qualifies as an “unreliable narrator.” The description, from her point of view, of her hoarding disorder was very well done, especially how it related to the backstory of this colony. In most cases I enjoy being tossed into a story and expected to figure things out based on clues in the text, but I did think that some of the background, especially the religious nature of the colony, was a bit thin.

Planetfall is the first novel in the Planetfall series but I read it after “After Atlas” and “Atlas Alone”, since it is set some 20 years after “After Atlas” in the universe's timeline. It focuses on the colonists who left Earth?? on a mission to find God and landed on this new planet, where there is a bio-mechanical alien structure they named “God's City”. Things get complicated when one day the grandson of the missions' leader wanders into the colony from the wilderness, having survived all these years far from the colony. The main character is Renata Ghali, an engineer knowledgeable in 3D printing. The books features anxiety disorders and extreme hoarding themes in an intimate way, all through the lens of the main character. Big secrets are revealed, with a more mystical ending than the other books in the series.?? It's the slower paced book of the series.